Addo Elephant National Park, SA’s third-largest national park, recently faced a crucial challenge—introducing fresh genetics into its aging lion population. Two young lionesses from Khamab Kalahari Reserve were the perfect fit, but with over 1,000km between the reserves, road transport wasn’t an option. Addo's Lions!
Enter The Bateleurs! With just days to spare before Christmas, Bats pilot Lloyd Rogers flew the two big cats in a Cessna 210, completing a 3.5-hour flight to safely deliver them to Addo. A massive thank you to Steve McCurrach and the Bateleurs team—without them, this critical translocation for Addo’s biodiversity and tourism wouldn’t have been possible!
ADDO's LIONs. CONSERVATIONIST REPORT:
Addo Elephant National Park is the 3rd largest National Park in SA. The park is close to 300 000ha. We do have a lion population with Kalahari genetics. Due to the ageing population we had to try and source some new blood and we were lucky to have found two young lionesses from Khamab Game Reserve who kindly donated the lions to Addo.
The problem was that the two areas are over a 1000km apart and to translocate by road would be a very onerous task. It also would not be too good for the health of the lions. We contacted the Bateleurs and Steve (McCurrach, GM Bateleurs) immediately came back to say that they will get the ball rolling to find someone from the Bateleurs to fly them down from Khamab to Addo. Kindly Lloyd Rogers, Bats pilot, came to the party and had the huge task to move two young 2 year old lionesses to Addo. They barely fitted in the Cesna 210 and after about a 3,5 hr flight they were safely delivered to Addo.
Without the Bateleurs this would not have been possible and we at Addo would like to thank Steve and his team and especially Lloyd for taking time, literally a couple of days before Christmas, to move the lions. For Addo from a biodiversity as well as tourism point of view it was desperately needed to get new blood into the system.
From myself and my team at Addo we would like to thank you all from the bottom of our Hearts for making this possible.
We salute you.
Nick de Goede
Park manager : Addo Elephant National Park
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